Chapter 005
<Episode 5>
It started to rain outside.
The dwarf brought out a man with a chain tied around his neck like an animal and handed the chain to Alfredo.
Alfredo took the chain, hesitated for a moment, and then said to me as if he couldn’t bear it anymore.
“This is not really true. I will report this to the Count. Buying people. No matter how much you call yourself a princess, this is strictly prohibited by imperial law!”
This is absurd.
How bad of a person Louisa must be for a servant in a class-based society to treat his master’s fiancé so rudely.
I frowned.
“You’re cocky.”
Alfredo muttered with a slightly frightened look on his face.
“Isn’t it true that buying people is a good thing…?”
“Whether you take the carriage back first or not is up to you. But before that, take off that chain first. It seems like I can’t do anything with my strength.”
I threw the key I got from the dwarf to Alfredo.
Then Alfredo accepted the key with a slightly embarrassed expression.
“You’re releasing me?”
“Then are you going to drag me away like a dog?”
The next emperor of this empire?
It’s crazy enough.
I thought Alfredo said, ‘You can’t do that….’ I mumbled and looked at the man’s skinny body while I was undoing the chain.
The first thing I saw was a wound.
Horribly gaping wounds that appear to have been hit by a whip with something attached to it.
Leo Peer, he was originally the first prince of this empire.
Until the previous emperor died suddenly and his brother Callinan, not his son Leo, ascended to the throne of emperor.
Callinan was suspected of assassinating the previous emperor, but there were not many who could stop him from seizing real power while the poisoned emperor was on the brink of death.
However, Callinan declared that he would keep Leo, the first prince, as the crown prince even after ascending to the throne of emperor.
To avoid suspicion of assassination.
But the suspicions were true, and Callinan was afraid that he would never know when his guilt would be revealed.
In particular, the fact that Leo was becoming more like his older brother as he grew older, and the thought that Leo might kill him if he noticed something made him increasingly crazy.
In the end, it was the night when the queen of Callinan gave birth to a son. Callinan decided to kill Leo, and when Leo realized this, he escaped the castle.
Leo Peer was only 10 years old.
“You…. How old are you?”
Leo raised his head at my words.
Jet black hair, golden eyes, everything was just as described in the novel.
In the original, when Louisa meets Leo, those whip marks have already become scars.
That means he is now nineteen.
He met me a year earlier than the original.
At that time, Leo’s body collapsed.
I frowned as I looked down at Leo, who was casually rolling around in the mud.
Even if you are a male protagonist, I have no intention of helping you up.
Still, my life depends on it…
The moment I stretched out my hand, Leo sat up.
My whole body was shaking, but it was helpful not to faint.
“Nineteen.”
Nonetheless, he answered.
Nineteen.
In the original, Leo met Louisa at the age of 20, so at least he saved a year of time spent hanging out at bars.
Wouldn’t this make Louisa’s fate a little different from death?
I squatted down in front of Leo.
Then Leo’s golden eyes shined.
I felt like they were going to kill me at any moment. I looked at that image as if I was looking at a mirror.
Louisa, who was driven to the stake, must have looked like that.
A pride that never backs down even in the face of someone who could kill him.
‘Everything beautiful is mine.’
Okay. I admit it.
While reading the original novel, I highly valued the villainess’s pride.
Maybe that’s what led me to this damn possession.
Anyway, the nineteen-year-old protagonist had a face I liked much more than I expected.
“The age is just right.”
“What are you saying-.”
Alfredo said in a confused voice.
I grabbed Leo’s chin. Then Leo exposed his teeth as if he was going to bite me right away.
“I like your face.”
“…What?”
Leo looked at me as if I was dumbfounded.
“I like the pronunciation, the vocalization, and the look in the eyes.”
You suit Romeo much better than the cover.
“I found it, my Romeo.”
I smiled brightly at him.
The stage will lift you and me out of this hell.
* * *
“So the princess bought a man?”
Arno signed the necessary documents while listening to Alfredo’s report. Without the slightest disturbance.
What. It’s a familiar development.
In the end, he used the money from selling his grandfather’s sword to do something like that.
What is theater operation like?
“Yes. However-.”
“Alfredo.”
Arno lifted his bespectacled face and looked at Alfredo.
Alfredo instinctively tensed in front of the purple eyes that showed no emotion at all.
‘It’s the same as the previous Sangdan lord.’
A face without the slightest emotion.
When ordering the betrothal of the princess and her son, the ancestral head of the royal family said this with the same expression on his face.
‘Get engaged. Let’s look at the marriage at that time and proceed if it is profitable.’
What did Arno say in front of the previous supremacist words?
‘What are the benefits for me?’
The ancestral leader smiled and said, as if he was amazed at what a 9-year-old said.
‘I will give you 30% of the profits that Dienche will receive through the principality.’
‘40%.’
‘305 pennies. There is nothing more than this.’
‘Great.’
What kind of conversation is this between a father and son?
At the time, Alfredo was astonished by the attitude of the head of the family who sold his son to a bastard princess in such a simple transaction.
But now, thinking back on that conversation, I thought differently.
The fact that the object of the transaction was not only Arno but also the princess.
The fact that Arno was 9 years old at the time means that the princess was 8 years old at the time.
‘Even if I wear a mask, I’m a woman that everyone here recognizes. So, if I do something, the people of the entire empire will be anxious to bite me.’
Maybe the people around her are influencing the princess to only see everything as buying, selling and owning it.
People around her who only saw her value, not herself.
While Alfredo was shaking with a hint of sympathy, Arno spoke in a cold voice.
“Let’s stop and listen to the princess’s whereabouts. It’s not worth listening to any more. If you want to buy that man some jewelry, lend him an appropriate amount of money and enter it in the ledger. There is still money left to come, so that much is-.”
“No, that’s not it. He doesn’t want to buy you jewelry.”
Alfredo bit his lip.
“You said you wanted to use that man as an actor.”
Arno frowned.
What nonsense is this?
Actors who were commoners are widely available, so why buy people from the slave market and have them become actors?
You’re probably making excuses again.
Alfredo, who read Arno’s expression, spoke quickly.
“Now they are taking us to the theater and making us practice. You’ve even finished casting other actors. I think-.”
Arno didn’t like Alfredo’s hesitation.
His faithful butler, who usually doesn’t hesitate, has been twitching in front of him like a puppy that doesn’t want to poop after going out to a bar with the princess.
“Just say it.”
“…Yes.”
Alfredo took a deep breath and said.
“This is something the maid overheard, and that night, while treating him, she said that he could put on a play if he wanted, but if not, he would let him go anywhere.”
“You’re letting me leave?”
You spent that much money to buy a man?
Arno’s eyebrows twitched.
“What kind of trick is this?”
“Is this a manipulative act?”
“What if it’s not a trick?”
Alfredo recalled the first time Luisa asked him his age.
‘You…. How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
The eyes were blurred by the answer that came back.
Alfredo felt the deep despair in those eyes.
I thought it was my mistake to read despair in those eyes.
At least until I heard what the maid said.
“Maybe Louisa didn’t think she was in a similar situation to that guy? Himself and that man. Grandpa’s belongings and that man. Because it’s the same thing being thrown away and sold.”
“What is that-.”
“This is the butler’s personal opinion that you can just forget about. You said a lot. Okay then.”
After leaving an incredibly emotional remark, Alfredo bowed his head and left the Count’s office.
But his words remained and lingered.
It is abandoned and sold.
The Count thought about those words for a moment and then picked up the document again.
“…….”
He quickly put away the documents and took out the script the princess had left behind from the drawer.
Romeo and Juliet.
A woman who was almost forced into an unwanted marriage by her family.
No way…. Is this your story?
* * *
“Ah.”
“Ah….”
“Ah.”
“Ah….”
I glared at Leo Peer, the actor who had been standing in a crooked posture earlier and was doing a terrible job practicing his vocalizations.
“Vocalization is the key to delivering lines. Even if the audience wants to evaluate your acting, they have to hear something to evaluate it!”
I started to feel angry.
Shin Geum, a popular director in Daehakro.
When I was attending college in New York, there wasn’t a single actor who dared to behave like that in front of me, even though he had made it to Broadway.
Not a single one!
Even the actors who were pushed by the agency because they were idols were more obedient than this.
“Master.”
It was then.
Leo said, rubbing his head while maintaining a crooked posture.
“I told you not to call me master. It seems like an abnormal relationship.”
“It’s an abnormal relationship. You bought me, I’m yours.”
I was dumbfounded as I listened to the man’s muttering voice.
Okay. It’s been a week since I bought this guy, treated him, dressed him in clean clothes, fed him, put him to sleep, and finally made him look like a human being.
During that week, I talked to him repeatedly.
‘If you don’t like it, you don’t have to become an actor. I’ll release you right away.’
This guy’s mask was a waste, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t do the play without it, so I didn’t have any intention of incurring the next emperor’s hatred and getting killed.
‘Don’t worry. I’m going to work hard, master.’
However, he spoke to me repeatedly with golden eyes that gave off a strange atmosphere.
I’m going to stand on stage.
That’s right, it’s been like this since the beginning of practice.
‘I expected it to some extent.’
So this guy has heard of my reputation.
Damn princess. A profane, extravagant woman.
I guess he’s just pretending to be obedient with the intention of appeasing this woman and then escaping when the time comes.
There like this-.
“Didn’t you buy me because you wanted me? There’s no need to make it this difficult. Even if you are an actress and I am not an actor, I am yours. Mouth….”
Leo’s sparkling, alive golden eyes approached me.
“You can kiss me.”
‘Seduction’ by a subject with a face that looks like someone kissing the most disgusting thing.
Even in this situation where you risk your life and gamble, you can’t give up your pride.
This is Leo Peer.
“You are, of course, Romeo.”
“What, master?”
I hit the chest of the guy who approached me and went to sit in the box seat below the theater.
“It’s good to practice vocalization and pronunciation from time to time. But if you get emotional, it will naturally follow. An angry person’s voice can be easily heard even outdoors. It’s because people automatically use abdominal breathing at times like that.”
“…So?”
I opened the script.
“First, let’s talk about this. What did you feel when you read the script, you insolent slave?”
Okay.
Our next emperor says he wants to be called a slave, so let’s just go with that.
“A traditional love story?”
Leo said that and looked down at me with disdain.
“If you want to kiss me, say so, master. So, you’re making me a male actor and you’re a female actor, right?”
I chuckled at Romeo’s answer.
It was like that.
This guy is my Romeo.
I was this damn Juliet.
It was ridiculous to think that this guy would kill me in the future, but there was a reason for that.
“No. You read something different in this script.”
I liked the cockiness in his golden eyes.
I also liked the absurd spirit of wanting to seduce me while hating me like that.
Because that’s the Romeo I was looking for.
“He has lived under the name of Montague all his life, but he is a family heir who does not want to follow the name of Montague. However, his rebellious love towards the old people who hinder his ambition.”
I smiled bitterly and pointed at Romeo.
“You read the story of Romeo. Slave.”
Just as I read Juliet’s story, so did you. Clearly.
